Last week, the Deputy Director of GRÓ LRT, Ms Berglind Orradóttir, visited GRÓ LRT’s partner institutions in Ghana: Environmental Protection Agency Ghana, both the Head Office in Accra and the Regional Office in Tamale; the CSIR-Soil Research Institute in Kumasi; and the CSIR-Savanna Agricultural Research Institute and the University for Development Studies, both in Tamale. The purpose of the visit was to meet the directors of the four institutions and interview potential candidates for GRÓ LRT Fellowship to attend our annual six-month training in Iceland. And as always in GRÓ LRT’s visits to partner countries, the Deputy Director also met with GRÓ LRT alumni in Ghana, but 24 specialists from the four institutions have completed GRÓ LRT training in Iceland.

During the 34th Session of the International Co-ordinating Council of the Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB-ICC) at UNESCO HQ in Paris this week, GRÓ LRT and the MAB secretariat co-hosted a side event titled Linking Knowledge to Action in Ecosystem Restoration: Cooperation between GRÓ LRT and UNSECO-MAB. The event started with opening remarks by Ms. Noëline Raondry Rakotoarisoa, Director a.i. of the SC/EES Division and Secretary of the MAB Programme, followed by a lecture by Dr Sjöfn Vilhelmsdóttir, Director of GRÓ LRT where she talked about Iceland’s experience of carrying out ecosystem restoration work for more than 100 years and the focus in the GRÓ LRT Programme on linking knowledge to action in land restoration and sustainable land management.

GRÓ LRT is delighted to announce the successful implementation of a 5-day training course organized in partnership with the Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Initiative and Arba Minch University on Integrated approaches for land restoration through sustainable land management in Arba Minch, Ethiopia.

Dr Gerald Eilu, Associate Professor in the Department of Forestry, Biodiversity and Tourism at Makerere University in Uganda, was the second international guest lecturer at the GRÓ LRT six-month training programme this week. Prof. Eilu gave a full-day lecture on biodiversity and its importance for human societies, addressing the issue in the context of ecosystem services, international frameworks and strategies for biodiversity conservation.